The features were aquiline and strongly marked; the eyebrows still black and very bushy, and beneath them shone a pair of grey eyes, keen and bright as those of a hawk.

But for all its sharpness, there was nothing unpleasant or fierce about the face; on the contrary, it was pervaded by a remarkable air of good-nature and pleasant shrewdness.

For the rest, the man was dressed in rough tweed clothes, tall riding-boots, and held a broad-brimmed Boer hunting hat in his hand.

Such, as John Niel first saw him, was the outer person of old Silas Croft, one of the most remarkable men in the Transvaal.
"Is that you, Captain Niel ?" roared out the stentorian voice.

"The natives said you were coming.